Memories can last a lifetime, but the neuronal synapses that store memories are made of macrolmolecules such as proteins that undergo synthesis and degradation on the scale of hour to days. The Huganir Lab, in which Dieiring was recently a postdoctoral scholar, hypothesized that a population of extremely long-lived proteins may reside at synapses, forming part of the substrate for long-term storage of memories. Here they have used metabolic labeling of mice and cultured neurons, combined with mass spectrometry to identify the synaptic long-lived proteome.
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